Nvidia Is Buying the Home of Open AI for $12.93 Billion

Nvidia is not paying $12.93 billion for the next OpenAI.

It is buying the place where much of the open AI ecosystem already lives.

Nvidia has agreed to acquire Hugging Face, the platform used by more than 18 million developers and researchers to share over 3 million models, 500,000 datasets and 1 million AI applications.

More than 200,000 companies use it to discover, evaluate, customise and deploy AI.

That is what makes this deal interesting.

Nvidia already sells the chips much of AI runs on. If this acquisition closes, it will also own one of the most important places where developers decide what models to use and how to deploy them.

And Nvidia clearly understands that connection.

In its own SEC filings, the company says the growth of open models increases demand for its products. If those models increasingly run on competing infrastructure, the opposite can happen.

So Hugging Face matters far beyond its own revenue.

Nvidia says the platform will remain open. Other models, clouds and even competing chips will continue to be supported. Nvidia hardware will not be required.

That commitment matters, because Hugging Face was built as a relatively neutral home for the AI community. Nvidia itself invested in the company in 2023 alongside companies including AMD, Intel, Google and Amazon.

Back then, Hugging Face was valued at $4.5 billion.

Now Nvidia is willing to pay $12.93 billion, including up to roughly $1 billion in equity to keep Hugging Face employees.

The acquisition has not closed yet. Regulatory approval is still required and Nvidia expects completion in the first half of 2027.

But the direction is already clear.

Nvidia doesn’t just want to provide the infrastructure underneath AI.

It increasingly wants to own the places where AI gets built and distributed too.

Hugging Face may remain open.

Open and independently owned, however, are two very different things.

#Nvidia #OpenSourceAI